


Danger Days

by catsonfire



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Dark Comedy, M/M, Suspense, Zombie Killin', and SMUT, some angst and fluff in the future
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-10-24 17:49:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10746759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catsonfire/pseuds/catsonfire
Summary: Home was where the heart was, right? From his experiences in life, he had learned that home was where the heart was still beating, where he wasn’t living in the constant fear of having to hack the heads off the people he loved with a crowbar, or a dead chainsaw, or whatever he could get his hands on. Where food wasn’t a bag of tortilla chips he’s been carefully rationing for three days.It's been just over a year since the second wave of 'influenza' hit Sunnyside, Washington.Zombie Apocalypse AU.





	1. run away, like it was yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: boywitch 
> 
> first of all, massive thank you to my dear jenny (libraribuns @ tumblr, miyubunny @ ao3) for your constant support, ideas, and brainstorming. you've literally been there through it all. bless your soul.  
> and thanks to max (unlikelycatisunlikely @ tumblr) for beta! 
> 
> im so sorry ive based a fic off of an entire mcr album. gonna go ahead and get that out there. rating will be raised if necessary in the future.  
> i'm stepping out of my comfort zone a little with this one but i've never been so thrilled to start a fic lol

_will you mean it when the end comes reeling?_

 

He wakes from a swirl of dreams—dreams of his past, dreams of his would-be future, dreams of things that never happened. His mother smiling at him, a soft bed in a dark, cool room, his two best friends practically flying around him on the riverbank not but half a mile away from his old home. His chest is warm, soft heat prickling at his heart and his veins and his lungs as he breaches consciousness like emerging from a pool.

He doesn’t open his eyes, doesn’t dare.

Eren lies still where he lays on the hard metal rack, small holes in the bottom (there for whatever reason—he’d never understood) leaving imprints in what little exposed skin he has pressed into them. He’s on his side, drawn up to make himself smaller, chest rising and falling slowly, shallowly. A backpack is wedged between his shoulder blades and the metal wall behind him that holds the shelf above him in place. He can feel the presence of another being more than he can hear or smell them, and his well-tuned instincts guide him through the motions. No sound, no movement, no life. He is to play dead, not risk his life to stretch his aching and worn muscles or dust the blood and dirt off of his ragged hoodie. A crow bar lies underneath the rack he’s on, pushed just slightly back to be out of sight, but obtainable.

He thinks back to the night (or maybe it’s day; he’s unsure). Without a visible sky, it’s hard to tell how long he’d been asleep. He’d assumed it was around seven in the afternoon when he’d taken shelter, just as the sun was starting to droop, and his plan was to emerge from the sturdy structure around four, just as it was peeking up over the horizon again. If they couldn’t see him, they wouldn’t bother him. He wanted to get the hell out of Montana as quickly as possible.

He doesn’t tense nor relax when he heard the soft whisper of footfall, not more than fifteen feet away, and a murmur of hushed voices.

There are at least four.

Four distinctly different voices, varying in pitch and tone. One female, from what he can tell. He slowly swallows the lump in his throat, slows his breathing to rest, praying they’ll think he’s asleep, praying they won’t kill him on the spot for sneaking into their shelter (it’s almost happened before), pray they won’t think he’s trying to steal from them (that’s happened before, too).

The footsteps stop, and his breathing nearly catches in his throat.

“There’s someone over there,” the softest, feminine voice whispers, and there’s the almost distant sound of cloth rustling, a small ‘chink’ of metal. They move closer, closer, until they’re only a few feet away from them and he can practically feel them breathing. He fights the carnal urge to grab the crowbar and dart, maybe swing wildly and _then_ dart, but he can’t afford to chance his life any more than he already has. “Hey. I think he’s asleep, don’t hurt him.”

“He trespassed,” another voice mutters, forcibly deep and quiet. “I think we should kill him. We don’t need any dead weight dragging us down.”

“He’s not harmed.” A third voice. It’s gentler, masculine. “Let’s wake him up and take him to the Captain. He’ll decide what to do with him from there.”

“Levi won’t care about a stupid kid, you moron! Let’s just—“

“Shut up, you’ll wake him up!” the woman hisses, and there’s a soft thump of what Eren assumes is a fist against a clothed arm. Eren’s lips fight to twitch, but he resists. This is a serious situation, all things considered. He has to remind himself of that.

“He’s already awake,” the fourth voice says, clear as day and calm, with no attempt to quiet them down. “If you two didn’t wake him up, he’s been awake this entire time.”

There’s a resounding, horrifying silence, another chink of metal, and then a soft sigh. Then, though, there’s a bright light glaring right in Eren’s face and he recoils, shifting back against the back pack shoved between his back and the metal industrial aisle wall behind him. He hisses under his breath, arms moving up to protect his head out of reflex, limbs screaming with protest from the sudden movement after spending so much time static.

“Get up,” the forcibly deep voice commands more than requests, and his body fights to comply. When he doesn’t move quickly enough, a hand grabs one of his arms and drags him down off of the rack onto the hard tiled floor in front of him. He grunts, slamming down onto his shoulder harder than he’d expected and cringes, opening his eyes only long enough only to catch a glimpse of a hand pushing the other away from him. “What?!”

“Don’t be an ass, Auruo,” the female chastises, like she’s his mother or something like this is a perfectly normal situation, and Eren bites back a soft whine as he rolls onto his back to hoist himself up into a sitting position. He holds his hands up, eyes still clenched shut, the flash light glaring into his eyes so brightly that he doesn’t want to risk blindness or something. “Look, he’s not going to do anything. And I’ve got his weapon.”

The metal of his crowbar scrapes against the tiled floor as she grabs it and pulls it out—he’d really thought it’d been out of sight, invisible to any attacker or passersby, and he’s pretty disappointed in himself for having been wrong.

The flash light turns away from his eyes and he sighs with relief, regarding the soft apology with a shake of his head.

Slowly, Eren opens his eyes to regard his captors. The shortest one, now holding his crowbar with both hands, is a small girl with ginger hair and honey-colored eyes, an apologetic smile playing at her lips. Next to her are three men—the shortest of the men stands next to the woman, wavy blond hair parted down the side, scowl permanently etched into his features (and Eren realizes that _he’s_ the one with the stick crammed up his ass). The other two stand at nearly the same height, one a blond with longer hair and the other with black short hair.

The most curious thing, to Eren, is that they’re all so _clean_ , their clothes looking almost brand new, hair fresh and shiny, where Eren hasn’t experienced so much as clean running water in over six months (and it’s apparent, too, with the way his skin is darker than usual and caked with dirt and blood and God knows what else, because his cleanliness has been second to his survival for so long that he’s nearly forgotten that normal people in normal situations bathe).

He feels as though he’s missed something when the woman’s smile falls and her lips form a perfect little ‘o’, eyes wide and almost terrified. He comes close to looking behind him to see if he’s grown an extra arm, nearly checks to see if he’s bleeding to death or if there’s a spider anywhere near. She opens her mouth a little wider, though, and he waits patiently for her to point whatever it is that’s caught her attention.

“Your—But . . . Gunter, his eyes . . .” she says, gesturing harmlessly at him with his own crowbar.

Eren’s mouth opens and he feels the words spring to his tongue, but the double barrel of a shotgun is staring him straight in the eyes and everything he’d planned to say dies right there in that very moment, just like his hope of survival. The black-haired man cocks the gun and orders him to ‘stay put.’

“Captain!”

 

_+_

 

It had begun in Sunnyside.

Originally born in Tacoma, Eren had moved to Sunnyside with his parents, urged on by a position offered to his father at a recently built biochemical institute. They had a project that they needed him for, they said, they needed his mind, needed his theories. At five years old, Eren didn’t understand the situation, and at ten years old he didn’t care.

When Eren was ten years old, the world ended for the first time in Sunnyside, Washington.

It was June twenty-fifth, during the summer of 2005. There had been ads on the television for yearly flu shots and vaccinations and the like—he’d never seen advertisements on the TV for things like that before, but he didn’t pay any mind. His mother set up his usual check-up and vaccination appointment before the school year began, like always, and he went about his life. The visit to the doctor had been mostly painless (aside from the needles jabbed into his arm, that hadn’t been so pleasant), nothing was found to be wrong, and he was dubbed a healthy, young boy.

He remembered fondly darting out of the house when they returned home, as soon as he’d gotten permission from his mother, to scurry over to the houses next door to collect his best friends and resume whatever fantasy game they had built up, something to do with a volcano or a waterfall on a floating city. His father wasn’t home.

Two weeks later, the first report of an elderly woman ‘losing control of her humanity’ hit the news. Seventy-seven-year-old Esther McMurry, born and raised in Sunnyside, collapsed in the parking lot of a family-owned grocery store, before mercilessly ripping the throat out of the first passerby to attempt to help her up. It took three police officers and two innocent lives to stop her, and when they couldn’t sedate her, the officers sent a bullet through her skull. The shots to her chest and femur hardly phased her.

Eren heard rumors at school about how her eyes had changed from their soft hazel to a glaring yellow-gold seconds before her first attack.

By the fourth week, over fifty citizens of Sunnyside had perished either due to the strange virus or due to the actions of people under the influence of it. Only one instance of an infected person biting an innocent confirmed that it was transferrable. These people lost every bit of their humanity, taking on more animalistic traits, snarling and growling as they clawed at their prey like yellow-eyed beasts. While they weren’t particularly outstanding in either strength or intelligence, their sheer desire to eat and destroy human life was enough to overpower most. Incidentally, nearly ninety percent of the population affected by the virus were women and children, who, though not always, tended to be easier for authorities to subdue than most able-bodied grown men. Eren heard his mom whispering to his childhood friend Armin’s grandfather about it one morning over a cup of coffee on the patio.

By August of 2005, large barbed fences, much like the likes of prison fences, rose around the simple town practically overnight. There was soft chatter of it but most stayed quiet, either in the hopes of not rattling children or in the hopes of not rattling themselves.  Martial law took over and the city bent to it, strict curfews put into place and guards stationed at every post of the fences.

The outbreaks didn’t stop. It was well into February of 2006 and the number of dead had risen to nearly five thousand, predominantly women and children. There were no public statements, no meetings, no rallies for the truth.

Eren and his family were fine, the local media praised the success of the vaccination, and never mentioned the dead that the government burned when the city was asleep.

In April of 2006, the fences fell in the same way they appeared; there one day and gone the next. Outreach to the local government was pushed to the side and promised information at later dates, and the later dates never came. Within months there were new projects to revitalize the city, new businesses put into place to attempt to drive jobs, even new gated communities when there weren’t even enough citizens left of the city to fill the houses they already had built. The oil field attempted to sweep Sunnyside, with little to no luck, but the city kept trying, and the economy slowly grew. There were rumors. There were horror stories. It seemed as though nothing could keep life away from this bright little town. 

Not until seven years later, when Eren found himself to be the last living creature in the simple town of Sunnyside.

 

_+_

 

Eren was freshly eighteen when the world ended in Sunnyside, Washington for the second time.

He was shuffling his beloved records around, organizing them in alphabetical order. The old record shop had been open since before he’d moved to Sunnyside and he’d fallen in love with it at first sight. The building was practically crumbling in the back, and sometimes they had leaks near the front door, but it was his baby. Eren was the only employee, running the store with the owner Pixis since he’d reached the age to work.  The pay wasn’t outstanding, but for someone who’d graduated high school just two months before, it was more than most places would pay him. What beat listening to music all day at work?

The neighborhood had been silent for the better half of the morning, the noisiness of kids terrorizing the streets and enjoying their summer absent.

There had been an outbreak of influenza over the last several weeks. Rumors of the flu of 2005 rattled the small town the moment it began and mothers flew into panics, restricting their children to the confines of their homes. An older man had sneezed in the shop a few days prior, and Eren witnessed a woman drag her son out the front door by the arm not seconds later. He thought it was silly, the way people would go to extremes to avoid something that, so far, hadn’t been deemed even the slightest bit dangerous. It was fifteen minutes shy of noon when a soft commotion started a block down. The brunette ignored it, keeping at his work, only shooting a quick glance at the clock. He finished placing his small stack of records in their proper places and sighed, rubbing the back of his neck as he made his way back to the front of the store.

He leaned against the counter, twiddling with a worn-down button on the cash register before the sounds of distant shouting brought his eyes to the shop’s glossy front windows.

One man ran down the sidewalk, holding his toddler close to his chest, brows drawn together and cheeks red. Eren watched with curiosity as he just ran, focused on something, apparently. The brunette worked his way back around the counter and pulled the front of the shop’s door open, still working on piecing together what the man was running to. With the flu problem, Eren couldn’t make sense of any sort of public affairs. Maybe he was just late?  Shifting his gaze to the other, Eren felt himself tense.

Swarms of people up and down the surrounding blocks were all rushing the same way; away from something. He drank in the looks of fear on their faces, the way parents gripped their children until their skin turned white, the way people tripped over their own feet and pushed others out of the way to move quicker. His heart dropped into his stomach when he recognized faces, saw people who had been in his store just that week. They didn’t see him, though, and saw nothing other than the path in front of them. He could hear shouting as the crowd finally reached the record shop, and past.

_“We have to leave! We have to get out of this town!”_

_“We’re going to die!”_

_“Where are the police?!”_

_“Have you seen your sister?!”_

An older man’s eyes met Eren’s, and the brunette’s mouth drops open to ask the only question on his mind, but he pushes past him, only barking that Eren needs to leave.

_Fuck me._

Deciding that Pixis would either understand or fire him, it took about three seconds for Eren to duck into the store to grab his phone and keys, lock the record shop up behind him, and take off down the street. He ran in the direction of the crowd, face pale and muscles shivering at the unknown. His house was up the hill and just around the corner, and the increasingly horrified crowd was not settling his nerves. Up ahead, the crowd broke into two different halves, screaming erupting from the center. It almost looked like a fight had broken out, a few passersby a little bloody, but Eren took a sharp right turn down his street, nearly uncaring. There was one thing on his mind.

His mother was home. She was supposed to be cleaning, baking some sweets for Armin’s grandfather. She was supposed to be safe. He shook the thought of, _Are my friends safe?_ And decided if anyone was capable on their own, they would be. They’d told him they’d be together this morning, something about going to lunch while Eren was stuck at work. His jealousy of delicious Chinese food was completely discarded and traded with the faintest sense of relief.

Eren slammed through the front door as soon as he reached the modest single-story home.

“Mom!” he shouted, tearing into the humble kitchen.

His heart stopped. The kitchen was empty, the timer for the oven beeping loudly. Nothing was out of place, though, and that itself made Eren’s spine tingle. Something felt horribly wrong as he made his way to the oven to turn it off and pull the crisp, burnt cookies out.

_Mom doesn’t burn anything._

“Mom?” he called again, placing the inedible cookies on the stove. He wandered through the house, to each of the empty two bedrooms, through the bathroom, to the living room. He found nothing, though—no signs of life or death. Everything was just as he’d left it when he’d headed out for work that morning. The flowers his mother said she’d pick from her garden were sitting in the center of the dining room table, along with the mail she’d plucked out of the mail box. It looked so normal to him that it was hard to compute some sort of alleged disaster.

The back door slammed, and he nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Hey, mom, is that you?” he asked, voice hoarse as he quickly weaved around their furniture. He skidded to a stop as he passed their tiny utility room and met the back door.

“Eren . . .”

His name came out as more of a vaguely recognizable gurgle than a name. His mother’s voice was scratchy, deeper than he was adjusted to. It almost wasn’t her voice.

Carla was on the floor, propping herself up with her elbows. She was bleeding, and Eren couldn’t really see where from. His _everything_ shook as he took in the sight of his mother, tattered and bruised, scratches on her face and blood drying in her hair. She was gripping the crook of her neck, blood staining her hands and clothes red. Her eyes were clamped shut and her lips were curled back into a snarl, teeth exposed. Eren allowed himself just a moment to look out the back door, and he sees the trail of blood on their backyard pathway. In pieces near the dumpster in the alley was a person, or so he assumed, the head detached and lying in the dirt next to his mother’s largest gardening shovel. He felt his stomach turn.

When Eren’s gaze returned to his mother, her eyes were open, and the beautiful blue-green of her sclera was gone. Her eyes burned yellow-gold, rims and whites slightly red. He could hardly see her pupils, they were so small, and there was an animosity, a violence behind her glare. She reached out with her bloody hands, uncovering her gushing wound and nearly falling on her face, scratching at the ground and wiggling to get closer to Eren. He could see it now, the gaping bite mark just between her shoulder and neck, blood pouring onto the concrete of their utility room and seeping under his boots. She was growling and grunting, slowly crawling towards him.

Memories of the first people who ‘turned’ during the first wave of influenza when he was a child flooded his mind. He’d even witnessed it a couple of times; the way they would lose themselves, consumed with the carnal _need, need, need_ to devour, to destroy. He’d seen those yellow eyes before, sometimes in his nightmares, coming after him, tearing him limb from limb, feeding on his flesh.

“I’m so sorry,” Eren whispered, his lips quivering as he spoke. He felt his eyes burning, and the stinging of fresh tears. He felt his heart breaking, ripping itself apart. “I-I wasn’t here. I could have . . . I should have been here to protect you.”

His mother was gone. Instead, on the floor, creeping its way to him, was a monster. An undying, golden-eyed creature, rotting from the inside out. It didn’t want to run its fingers through his hair and kiss his forehead or snap at him to clean his room. It wanted him dead.

Eren’s teeth sunk into his lower lip as he tugged the crowbar off of the utility shelf to his left. It'd hardly been used. He remembered swinging it around in his back yard as a child and being chastised by his mother because it obviously wasn’t a toy. He remembered breaking into his own car with it at the tender age of sixteen, with his friends Mikasa and Armin ( _are they even alive?_ ) when he’d locked his keys inside and couldn’t afford a locksmith.

He’d likely remember, too, for the rest of his life, the way it swung down onto the back of his mother’s neck. The way her blood splattered against his cheek and onto his clothes. The way one swing wasn’t enough, three swings, five swings. When her head finally snaps off and rolled to the side, showing him half of her face, he knew he’d remember the lifeless expression on her face, and the yellow of her eyes.

Arms shaking, Eren stumbled out the back door after what felt like hours, and it very well might have been. The sun had sunk deeper to the west, nearly dipping below the horizon. The town had fallen silent. Trash littered the streets and alleyways, as well as headless bodies and bodiless heads. A few houses down, Eren spotted two of the undead monsters, crawling around and gurgling in similar fashions as his mother, but he avoided them altogether to search the neighboring houses, eyes peeled for his closest friends.

It was dark before he gave in, returning to his home to sit on the porch and resting his crowbar on the awning post next to him. The city was trashed and abandoned. Eren’s friends were gone. His mother was gone. His father was likely gone as well, though it wasn’t like he’d seen him in months anyway. There was a soft, burning rage inside of him, dampened only by the realization that he was completely alone.

Eren Jaeger was left in Sunnyside with nothing but the sounds of the remaining dead and flickering street lights.

 

_+_

“Captain!” the black-haired man, presumably Gunter calls out from across the supercenter. “You were right, there was someone here. You need to see this!”

“Erd, turn on the lights?” the woman asks, voice soft as she turns to one of the blond men—this one has his hair pulled into a sloppy bun, obviously not too keen on post-apocalyptic haircuts. “Just over pets, though. Don’t want Levi to gripe too much about wasting power.”

The man nods and turns on his heels to jog out of the aisle and towards the back of the store. Eren turns his attention back to the other three, to find the woman wide-eyed and the black-haired man holding a shotgun to his head, still, while the third person—the wavy blond, otherwise known as Butt Stick—is sneering at him. When they make eye contact, it only seems to make the man a little angrier, as though the thought of not finishing him right there was absolutely abhorrent. Eren sort of loves it.

Just as Erd’s footsteps are fading, a new set of footsteps is coming from the same direction, different, almost heavier. Eren’s stunned into silence when a man, almost half a foot shorter than him, sharply turns the corner and walks down the aisle as the lights flicker on overhead.

He’s really fucking short, even if his footsteps are confusingly powerful. He brings with him a scent that Eren can’t quite put his finger on, something almost enticing, something that reminds him of adrenaline and gasoline. He’s much cleaner than the rest, ridiculously clean, fingernails cut and filed in a way that Eren hasn’t seen in over a year, black hair perfectly trimmed and even shaved underneath. His skin looks a little lighter than it probably should be, like he scrubs every inch of his skin clean on the daily. Even his clothes, a white mid-sleeve Henley, and black jeans, are perfect and unwrinkled. His face is thin and tight, almost pinched-looking as he surveys Eren with his sharp grey eyes before him. With as tidy as he is, Eren can’t see how this guy’s been living through the end of the world this whole time, and not just step out of a fucking Aeropostale add for short men. He also looks fucking disgusted. As the woman pulls his backpack off of the shelf and hands it to him, he lets out a soft “tsk”.

“You smell awful and you look dead, literally,” their captain says, voice deep but smooth. “What dumpster did you crawl out of, kid?”

“Captain, his eyes—” the woman starts, but he shakes his head to cut her off. She frowns, but when Eren simply stares at the two of them, she clears her throat. “What’s your name?”

“Eren,” he coughs out. His voice is rough and scratchy and hardly sounds like his own. He hasn’t used his words in what feels like an eternity. He hasn’t seen this many person in one place in months, and the last people had tried to kill him. Once he clears his throat, he tries again, “Eren Jaeger.”

_That’s better._

“My name is Petra,” the woman says, and though it’s a bit nervous, she offers him a soft smile. Eren decides he likes her. “This is our captain, Levi.”

Eren turns his eyes to Levi and nods, his weak attempt at a “how do you do”, and Levi glances down into his backpack instead of responding, shuffling through his things. Eren’s blood burns for just a fraction of a second before he manages to compose himself, the realization that these people have his life in their hands dawning on him. He has no weapons, and he’s fucking starving.

_This is bullshit._

“Tell me, Eren,” Levi says as he pulls out the single-barrel shotgun Eren had found a few months ago in the display case of an abandoned sporting goods store. He pops open the barrel to make sure there are no shells before he tosses it onto the hard ground and pulls out the brunette’s prized iPod, tangled headphone wires and all. Levi grimaces, but untangles the cords and neatly wraps them around the device before sliding it back into the bag and tossing it into Eren’s lap. His gaze pierces into Eren, killing whatever fighting spirit Eren might have left. “Why exactly do you have the eyes of the dead?”


	2. the red line

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr: boywitch
> 
> once again huge thank you to my betas! also thanks to everyone who's commenting and pressing that kudos button. you guys keep me goin   
> this chapter's out a little earlier than i planned because i just cant control myself if im being honest   
> hope u like it !

“Wait, excuse me?”

Eren’s eyes are wide when Levi gets a good look at him. They really are golden, like the rotting corpses casually hanging around their Wal-Mart, waiting for a healthy snack. They’re different, though—the animosity is lacking. There is no carnal desire to consume and demolish, only confusion. And probably a little bit of irritation. But to the kid’s credit he had just yanked him out of bed and threw his shit on the ground.

He’s a cute kid, just fucking filthy. He’s wearing what looks to have once been a blue hoodie, smattered with blood and probably entrails and possibly mud. His shaggy brown hair hangs past his shoulders and in his eyes, and there are hideous rat’s nests in the back. His face is smudged with dirt, and upon further inspection _there is actually dirt resting in the lines of his neck._ Levi feels a soft shudder rock through him at the thought, simply imagining the feeling. His jeans are ripped and shredded at the bottoms, and he’s wearing combat boots with floppy-looking soles. Levi’s pretty sure that the brunette has taken better care of his iPod in the last several months than his own personal hygiene. He _almost_ can’t blame him. Not everyone can be lucky.

“Your eyes are golden,” Petra says, voice too soft. She’s trying not to startle him, and Levi thinks it’s silly. He’s obviously killed undead on his own with a crowbar and a useless shotgun. “When was the last time you saw yourself?”

Eren’s grimace and shy shift of attention to his ratty boots says enough.

“They were blue. Or green. Or kinda both,” Eren mutters. “I don’t know . . . Why . . .”

“Well, you don’t seem to want to eat anyone,” Petra says, always the optimist. “The dead don’t really talk much, after all. And you don’t look like you’re decomposing.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Levi snaps, and Eren whips his head back up to face him. His brows are drawn and he looks pissed, but Levi shrugs it off. “I want to know what the fuck you think you’re doing in my store.”

Eren’s mouth drops open, and he scrambles for words by fidgeting with the straps and zippers on his backpack. He mumbles something unintelligible under his breath and Levi sighs.

“A little louder, kid.”

“I just needed a place to rest,” he snaps back, louder, forcefully, and Levi decides he kind of likes his shitty attitude. There’s a glare in those pretty golden eyes with just the right amount of fight for survival. “I’m going somewhere. I didn’t wanna take any of your shit or hurt anyone. I just needed somewhere to sleep.”

_Heading somewhere._

_Classic._

“Let me guess,” Auruo interjects, and Levi physically feels himself growing older. “You’re heading towards that so-called sanctuary in Virginia, right? What’s it called?”

“Valhalla,” Eren spits. He wasn’t fond of Auruo’s interruption either. He must have felt they were having a moment, too. “I think my friends are there.”

This piques Levi’s interest, though now isn’t the time.

There have been plenty of survivors wander by. Some of them they had helped, thanks to Petra’s good graces and warm heart. They’d heard every word of mouth about Valhalla from the beginning, but Levi refuses to leave. They could sustain themselves at the rate they were going for another several years with the resources they’d managed to gather during the first month of the outbreak. The property had a decently sized water well and a considerable stock of dry and canned goods, as well as clean drinking water. He and Gunter had done quick work of filling up as many of the gas tanks and barrels they could find in lawn and garden (and the stock in the back) with gasoline from the Murphy’s station in the parking lot before other survivors dove for it.

Levi has no family to search for or mourn. He has friends, but something tells him they’re fine, even a year into the end of the world. Brains as precious as those definitely had to be protected, rather than decomposing. He supposes he considers his people his friends; after all, he hasn’t killed any of them yet.

“Auruo, go prepare the water for a shower,” Levi says, effectively cutting the blond off from whatever argument over Valhalla he and Eren were throwing themselves into. “And make it hot. I’m going to assume he hasn’t bathed in a few months. Petra, start washing his clothes and find something clean that’ll fit him.”

He starts around the corner of the aisle again, towards the back of the store from where he came earlier, waving a hand at Erd and Gunter. He only takes a second to acknowledge the way Eren’s eyes sparkle at the mention of luxuries they used to take advantage of.

“You two watch him. Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.”

 

_+_

 

Eren howls when the hot water scorches his legs and back.

He’s grinning from ear to ear, eyes clamped shut as he scrubs his fingers through his tangled hair, working as much of the dirt and blood out of it as possible. He’s bathed in streams, ponds and lakes since the end of Sunnyside, but hasn’t had the pleasure of an actual hot shower. It’s really just a hot water heater resting against the wall in what he assumes to be the receiving area rigged to a water hose with a shower head duct taped onto it. It’s creatively held up by a coat hanger they seemed to install themselves into the wall, and placed right next to a drain in the smooth concrete.

When he’s worked as much of the grit as he can from his hair, he turns and lets the water rain on his face. It doesn’t sting, like the rain in the middle of January when he’s stuck in the middle of Buttfuck Wherever, Montana. It melts the grime off of his skin, pooling at his feet in a dark muddy puddle, and probably a layer of his skin considering the temperature (Auruo must not have been fond of his orders, or of him). He rubs his hand over his forearm, and makes a face at the way his skin is so much paler than he remembers underneath all of the dirt. Maybe it’s been working like sunblock.

Eren jerks when Erd sneezes, and stiffens under the hot rain.

The only thing separating the brunette from his apparent guard dogs are a few shower curtains strung from ladders that stood around the drain. It serves its purpose, he decides, even if it looks less than aesthetically pleasing. He’s pretty sure the men watching him can see the top of his head and probably his dirty, hairy legs, but he tries not to let that thought sit in his mind for too long.

“Come on,” he hears Gunter shout to him. “We don’t have unlimited water, you know! Soap’s on the floor next to the edge of the curtains.”

Eren glances down to look at the small assortment of soaps. There are three different kinds of men’s two-in-one shampoo and body soap combinations, a couple of flowery-looking shampoos and body washes, and then, furthest away from the rest of the soap and much cleaner, three very expensive-looking bottles. The brunette decides those are Levi’s—a shampoo, conditioner and a body soap, probably expertly extracted from the nearest hair salon shortly after the outbreak. He grins, snagging one of the men’s soaps when he decides that fucking with Levi’s soap is something he’ll definitely have do, but later. Lathering the thick substance into his hair, he can feel the stress rolling out of his body in waves, releasing from a lockbox buried inside his chest. He feels younger, fearless, like he did before the world collectively shit the bed on him. He scrubs it across his body with the wash rag Levi had shoved into his hands shortly before he’d stepped into the receiving area of the building.

_“Scrub as fucking hard as you are physically capable,”_ Levi had said, a scowl at his lips as he looked Eren up and down. _“You’re lucky I’m even letting you contaminate our shit like this.”_

Levi is a character.

He is confusingly beautiful and intimidating, like something out of mythology. His high cheekbones compliment his sharp, thin eyes. His jawline isn’t particularly jutting, but it gives his face a balancing delicate look when Eren can already say he’s anything but. His body, from what Eren has seen, isn’t feminine in the least despite his small stature.

Halfway scrubbing down the remainder of his body, Eren’s face twists into a grimace as he realizes he’s been focusing on the captain. Yeah, the little guy definitely demands attention, but the rest of the team is pretty notable too. Petra is soft and friendly, reminding Eren a little bit of his mother, or Armin. She’s been smiling pretty consistently since Levi has, more or less, given Eren permission to stick around for a little while, and it definitely brightens up the broodiness of the other men. Gunter doesn’t smile too much, but he seems to have a fairly mild personality, and Erd strikes Eren as more of a “watch and listen” kind of guy. Auruo is obnoxious and trying too hard to be _something_ that he particularly isn’t, but the respect he has for Levi is practically palpable.

The most noticeable thing about the group of people is their understanding of each other. Levi barks orders left and right, as if it’s as easy as breathing to him, and the rest simply follow along, no questions asked. It’s fascinating to him. What kinds of things have these people accomplished to reach this point with one another? How many people have they seen die?

When he shuts off the water, a whistle comes from his right and a towel is tossed over the curtains without a word. He snags it before it drops to the ground and scrubs his dripping hair with it, exhaling deeply.

What did he do to deserve being taken care of like this? Yeah, he’s gone through a year of his own personal hell, constantly cycling through finding people to travel with, losing those people, and being alone again. It’s easier to survive in numbers, he’s found, and it’s just as easy to die in numbers. He’s felt responsible for the deaths of people he couldn’t possibly save, mourned children that weren’t his. These people can take care of themselves, the proof is everywhere he looks, but disaster seems to follow Eren everywhere and these people don’t deserve that.

When he steps out from behind the curtains, hair messy and towel wrapped around his hips, Erd and Gunter are waiting, leaning against the wall side-by-side. Erd grins a little at him.

“Took your time,” he says, holding a comb out to Eren, who gratefully accepts. “Not as long as the last girl who was here, though. She almost emptied out the water heater.”

“How many people have you guys had come through?” Eren asks, pulling the comb through his ridiculously long hair. He has to see who cut Levi’s hair and see if they’d be willing to give him a trim. “I mean, it’s not like you guys really have a shortage of supplies or anything. Maybe food, but that’d still take a long time, right?”

“We have about five or six years worth of food stored,” Gunter answers for Erd. “At least at this rate, that’s what Levi says. And we see someone just about once or twice a month. Some people sneak in just to stay, like you did. Most people we just find stranded or trapped somewhere when we go out on town sweeps, though. Levi won’t tell you, but he likes to find people to help. He likes to blame in on Petra’s soft heart.”

Eren smiles. Something about the group’s relationship was familiar to him.

“There are other survivors in town, too,” Erd throws in. When Eren raises his eyebrows, he continues, “There’s a sporting goods store not too far from here, you might have seen it when you came into town. It’s all boarded up, like ours. They have shit tons of guns, blades and ammo so we do some trading with them sometimes. Levi had connections back in the day. There’s another group, too, on the other side of town, but we haven’t really seen much of them. I think they’re scared we’ll fuck ‘em up.”

“Or they’re waiting for the right time. Who knows if they’ve got dealings, too?”  

At the sound of Levi’s voice, all three heads snap in his direction. He gives Eren a once over that makes goose bumps raise on the brunette’s arms, and Eren swears he knows.

“You clean up just fine,” he says, voice quiet. Eren opens his mouth to respond, but Levi stabs a small stack of clothing at him, eyes darting elsewhere. “Go get changed. The bathrooms are down that hall, to the right.” He nods in the direction of the hallway. “Meet us in the back office when you’re done for a bite to eat. Don’t use too much electricity.”

Eren nods as the three head towards the office, and he shuffles through the clothes, inspecting them. They’re the right size, but there’s one problem.

“Are these skinny jeans?”

He swears he sees the hint of a smirk at Levi’s lips when the man glances back to him, even if only for a second.

 

_+_

 

“From what we’ve seen, the only place the dead are weak are their heads,” Petra says after a bite of instant mashed potatoes. Eren nods, as he’s figured about the same. He’s stabbed them in the heart, he’s busted all of their limbs off, but nothing kills them aside from severe damage to the brain. “That alone seems to be what gets most people killed, actually! I’m sure anyone alive still knows it by now, though, right Eren?”

“Yeah,” he confirms. “I kinda assumed that in the beginning, and I ended up being right. Who knew all of those Zombie flicks were spot on?”

Petra giggles, and Eren finds himself smiling. She’s like the group’s very own little sunshine . . .

“We’ve heard rumors that the virus started in a tiny shit-hole town in Washington,” Auruo says, crossing his arms over his chest. He’d already finished his meal, and had given the largest portion to Petra, who had nothing negative to say about it whatsoever. “What have you heard?”

Eren swallows down his bite and stares down into his bowl of mashed potatoes, stabbing at it with his knife. Bits of the first day of the outbreak play through his head, and he blocks out the worst of it by shoveling another spoonful into his mouth. Auruo’s eyebrows draw together, likely offended by the lack of response.

“Sunnyside, Washington,” Eren states around his mouthful, before realizing that’s probably even more disrespectful. The look on Auruo’s face says so. He swallows the rest down. “That’s where it started.”

“Yeah, that’s what it’s called!” Petra says, nodding. “I heard it was some crazy government experiment, or some sort of biochemical warfare.”

The two of them discuss the different theories they’ve heard with Gunter and Erd while Eren shoves the rest of his mashed potatoes into his mouth and Levi listens, leaning up against the wall nearby. Eren avoided the conversation, opting for single-word responses when he could as he wolfed down the rest of his potatoes, filling his aching, empty stomach. He could feel eyes on him, but the conversation was still going, Auruo calling Petra stupid for a theory she’d heard.

When he’s finished, he glances around the room to the five people who have taken him. They’re definitely not shy people, and they’ve somehow embraced a total stranger. Aren’t they worried he’ll have bad intentions, or take off with a shit load of their supplies? It’s not like he’s planning on it. Maybe to someone who deserves it, but these people have already shown him kindness he hasn’t known in some time.

It warms Eren’s chest and his heart aches, unfamiliar with the feeling.

Levi makes his way over to him and holds out a hand for his bowl. Eren blinks up at him from where he sits, and smiles almost shyly as he hands his bowl over. He mumbles his thanks as Levi makes his rounds around the room to gather the empty bowls, before heading out of the office area without a word. The conversation around him stops as Petra catches his eye, and winks. His cheeks warm.

“He doesn’t talk much at first and I know he seems cold, but he’s very sweet, deep in there,” she says, something akin to just _knowing something_ in her eyes. “He’s all dark, strong and mysterious on the outside, but in reality he’s just a big loser.”

“Yeah, don’t let him scare you,” Auruo says, arms waving out dramatically at his sides. “He’s pretty tough, but he’ll only slice you up if you deserve it.”

“That’s hot shit coming from you, you piss yourself just about every time he looks at you,” Petra says, grinning smugly at her friend as she folds her arms across her chest. “Remember when you used to stutter and trip over your feet when he’d talk to you? It was like you had a crush on him!”

Auruo’s face turns a bright red and he scowls at her, throwing an accusing finger.

“You used to look at him when he was sleeping! Now everyone knows.”

Something akin to a screech erupts from Petra’s pretty little mouth and she reaches over to knock Auruo’s head with her fist.

“You promised!” she shrieks, jumping up from her seat to pounce at him and beat at his chest and shoulders. “You said you wouldn’t tell anyone as long as I didn’t tell anyone about your secret!” She stops, and her eyes narrow. “You know what this means.”

“Petra. No—“

“Auruo wet the bed the first two weeks after the outbreak started! He’d wake up crying and sniveling and asking for his mom, and would always wake me up to help him fall back asleep!”

The color drains from Auruo’s face, obvious even in the dim light of the battery operated lanterns they have in each corner of the office. Eren feels his lips stretch into a grin as he watches Petra, breathing heavily, glare at Auruo for spilling her secret. Erd and Gunter’s laughter roars through the small room as they’re both doubled over, mumbling incoherently about their friends’ apparent deepest, darkest secrets. Eren grins, watching as the chaos unfolds, wishing Levi was there to see it (before he remembers Levi likely sees something comparable to it every day).  

Something taps his shoulder and Eren’s head whips around, the others oblivious. Grey eyes meet his, and a bottle of water is shoved into his hands. He blinks sharply, gaze darting between the bottle and Levi as the shorter man pulled his chair to sit over next to him. _Oh shit._

“They’re noisy,” Levi mutters. He’s within arm’s length, and Eren’s hyperaware. “So, Eren. While they’re busy. Where are you from?”

Eren’s heart skips a beat and a heaviness settles into his chest, clenching.

It’s a tough subject.

“You might not believe me,” he says, honestly.

He meets Levi’s eyes again and smiles sort of pathetically. A gut feeling tells him Levi won’t believe him. He might get pissed. He hasn’t told anyone the truth about where he’s from. The black-haired man only raises an eyebrow and tilts his head ever so slightly.

“Want to know how I know it started in Sunnyside?”

Levi seems to make the connection immediately, eyes widening just slightly. He studies Eren, his features (Eren can feel it, and it feels weird), but mostly his eyes. When he turns his gaze away, Eren starts to panic again, the anxiety in his chest clenching again. Levi fucking _chuckles._

“A boy from Sunnyside just shows up in _my_ store,” he says, as if he were thinking out loud. “I’ve heard that everyone that was left behind died. There were a couple of girls, just about a month ago who were from there.”

Eren straightens in an instance. He even leans forward, towards Levi, eyes wide. He’d known nearly everyone in his small town, and if there was a chance that he could find someone from home . . .

“What were their names?” he asks, voice quiet but almost forceful. “How old were they? What did they look like? Wh—“

“Hey,” Levi snaps, and Eren reels. “Calm down.”

Eren inhales deeply and releases it in a sigh. He leans back into his chair and rubs the back of his head, glancing down. He swallows down his pride and mumbles a soft apology.

Levi clears his throat.

“Their names were Ymir and Christa,” he says after a moment. Eren laughs mirthlessly, surprising the both of them. “Well, then. Christa was sweet, but Ymir had a bit of an attitude. They were about your age, I’m guessing. Do you know them?”

“Yeah,” he says, sneering. “Ymir beat me up in third grade. Christa’s her girlfriend. Figures that they’re alive.”

Levi snorts.

“You might not be as tough as I thought you were, Sunnyside. To your credit, I’m sure she could beat the shit out of Auruo.”

Eren grumbles his response, but when he sees the slightest upward turn of the edges of Levi’s lips, he lets out the breath he didn’t realize he was holding and melts into his chair. He wonders a little absently as Levi’s attention drifts over to the others, still bickering, how long he’ll stay here.

 

_+_

 

“Why the fuck didn’t you let me do this sooner?”

Levi gripes to both himself and Eren as he cuts away at the unreasonably long locks of brown hair. It’s been a few days short of a month since Eren arrived in Bozeman, Montana and stayed the night in an occupied Wal-Mart as a pit stop. His plans to travel to Valhalla had been paused, but he’s had plans. Plans that he tends to forget when he catches Levi’s eyes directly.

He won’t admit to anything. He pleads the fifth.

“I wanted to pull off that hot grungy look,” Eren retorts, rolling his eyes. He’s sitting in a lawn chair in the middle of the service center, which happens to be one of Levi’s favorite spots (he claimed it for himself and made the cash room behind the counter his bedroom some time ago). They’ve fashioned a rain coat into a cape to keep the hair off of him. “Little did I know that it wasn’t for me. Nobody told me.”

“Bullshit. I told you. Look down.”

“Liar.”

Levi rolls his eyes, but Eren can see the smallest smile from the body-sized mirror they’ve propped up against the wall before he stares down at the floor. He works at hacking away Eren’s hair, and eventually there are inches laying on the ground underneath him. Levi had been (almost) begging him for the last couple of days to let him cut his hair, and he only gave in when the rest of the team had convinced him that Levi actually did a pretty damn good job with haircuts.

Eren’s gone on a few raids with the team, and he understands why they all call Levi their captain now. He’s seen him in action, and the older man is powerful beyond anything the brunette’s seen. He’s used one particular fire axe more times than Eren could count, and rarely left the ridiculously enforced supercenter without a particular revolver he’d traded the sporting goods store for some time ago. The others had their fair share of strength and had saved Eren’s ass on more than one occasion each, but Levi the most. If Eren wasn’t mistaken, it almost seemed like he was soft on him.

“Look up.”

Eren pulls his head up and takes his own reflection in.

He looks normal, as if he’d never left Sunnyside. His hair is healthy and at an acceptable length and style again, split ends gone. He knows this means bedhead, but at least there would be less tangling and nasty gore clumps. When he checks to see what Levi thinks, the older man is studying him, like he had when they first met. This time is different, though—

“Captain!”

Petra’s voice comes from the east side of the super center, coupled with a loud bang. There’s shouting and chaos from Petra’s direction, and by the time Eren’s stood up and pulled the makeshift cape off of his shoulders, Levi’s gone.

 

_Keep your boots tight,_  
Keep your gun close,  
And die with your mask on if you've got to.


	3. system failure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Defend.
> 
> Destroy.
> 
> Eat—
> 
> Levi shouts his name and the pieces click back together in Eren’s mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> very sorry for such a delayed update. that darn ole mental health lol

_Everybody wants to change the world,_  
But no one—  
No one wants to die

 

The first time a friend of Eren’s had fallen to the undead had been just two months after the outbreak.

He’d made it to Lind, Washington with a small group of people from Prosser, a town Eren had passed through on his way out of Sunnyside. He’d been wandering, directionless and mapless, from town to town for a few weeks before he’d found them, huddling and weak in the far corner of an abandoned farmhouse. There were two boys, Mylius and Thomas, as well as a girl named Mina. They were friendly, if not a little soft. When faced with the undead, Mina tended to freeze and Mylius and Thomas had decided the best course of action was to simply run as fast as they could in the opposite direction. Eren had found this led to a lack of supplies, namely food, and he’d taken charge.

Something about hacking your mother’s head off really changed the way a person saw death. At first, he’d only narrowly avoided getting bitten or ripped to shreds, bonding deeply with his beloved crowbar. It wasn’t the most effective weapon, but it was enough to smash in slowly deteriorating skulls. He’d done what he could during the days following his departure from Sunnyside, sleeping on rooftops of the quieter buildings and learning the full awareness threshold of a walking corpse. It was disheartening when he realized they were erratic creatures—some had excellent hearing, while some were blind and hardly had a sense of smell. Some were fast, while some could hardly crawl along in the dirt after your footprints. The worst ones displayed the strength of four able-bodied humans combined.

Eren had found it took a certain level of willingness to survive to keep fighting, and some people just didn’t have that. He truly didn’t understand why he had it. Where had it come from? The world had ended, his mother was dead and he’d killed her, and he had no idea if his friends were still alive. He didn’t know if he’d find them, and he didn’t know if Valhalla was real.

Perhaps he’d always been one to gamble with his life. Perhaps he’d always been one for self-sacrifice.

His will to live helped him lead, though, and he hardly realized it. These people were weaker than he was but it didn’t faze him, he never thought of it that way. He saw them as people with different strengths and weaknesses, as people who were fully capable of working together in a pinch. Individually, nobody in the group was particularly talented, but together Eren saw what they were really capable of.

He’d nearly lost his life trying to save his friends from Prosser in Lind.

The town was so small, they hadn’t been sure it was even a town when they’d passed the city limit sign (though that could be said about many small Washington towns). There was always a possibility of hostile survivors or hordes of dead, but it didn’t really become a reality until they’d started to cross the bridge over the Yakima River.

“Thomas!” Mina shouted, eyes wide as she stared back to where they had come from. “Guys, there’s a huge group of them!”

Had they smelled them? Eren narrowed his eyes back at the group of undead. There had to be at least three dozen of them, possibly more. They’d managed to take small groups on as a team, but the more people in a skirmish with the dead, the more liability, especially with Mina. She was a bright girl, but she hadn’t managed a kill, limbs notorious for locking up in the face of danger. She was observant and thoughtful, finding ways around problems that arose unless they were snapping and grabbing at her for dinner.

“Keep going,” Eren barked when Thomas only stared. They’d stopped moving, and dread settled into Eren’s chest. “We have to keep going! Come on, we’ll find somewhere safe and lock up for the night.”

 They were so careful, and to this day Eren still replays it in his head; the way they were cornered in the food packaging warehouse. Nothing had stirred inside when they’d checked for life, and the doors had been blocked securely. The four of them managed to survive for a solid month together, dodging this disaster and that. They’d formed friendships, bonds, inside jokes, both good and bad memories. Eren replayed those memories as he pulled himself through an opening in the side of the crumbling building and lifted himself up onto higher ground.

The stairwell was just ahead. He could pull himself and his friends to safety.

When he turned back to grab Mina’s hand, though, his three friends were out of sight. He heard struggling, shuffling, something that sounds similar to a shout, and then,

“Eren, just run!”

Mylius’ voice, cracking.

He caught a single glimpse of a hand grabbing from the throngs of the dead, and _when did they gain on them?_ It was pulled back in, though, and he watched as flesh separated from the bone, blood gushed onto the floor and onto the rotting animated bodies bashing into each other to get a taste of their snack. In the back, he saw a flash of blond hair before it plunged underneath the bodies of the dead. It was too dark in the infested building to even dream of going back and still walking away unharmed, much less alive.

He clenched his fist in the tiny stairwell and watched the horde in their commotion below them.

Eren wondered, many nights after, why he was able to save himself but not the ones he loved. How could he expect to keep his closest friends alive if he ever found them again?

 

_+_

 

“Captain!”

The first thing that runs through Eren’s mind is that he’s not quite sure where his goddamn crowbar is. He’s not one to let it get away from him, but he’s gotten pretty good about letting his guard down around Levi, who seems to have it together. When Eren comes skidding around the corner, whipping his head back and forth to see just where the noises are coming from, he can see Levi heading towards the pharmacy, fire axe in hand.

“Survivors!” he hears Gunter shout, and there’s a gunshot. “Get down!”

Eren’s ears ring as he tears his way back into the business center. He ducks back behind the counter and rummages around in the drawers and shelves until he feels something heavy. When he pulls it out, it’s a worn and dented metal baseball bat, the grip peeling away and gritty. Though he knows it’s nothing against a firearm, he pulls it out anyway and nearly trips over his own feet on the glossy linoleum back towards where Levi had gone.

The commotion is intense now, the sounds and smells of the dead flooding into the super center. There are stragglers around the building and he can see them up ahead, even in the low lighting.

He takes a nice hard swing at the first walking corpse he runs into and tears its head right off. Rancid flesh sticks to the metal of his new weapon and he slings it off to the side as the putrid body drops to the ground before him. Another comes wobbling out from between old unused checkout lines, arms comically stretched towards Eren, and he finds himself grinning despite the situation. It’s like a picture out of an old zombie comic book he used to have, down to the rotting finger half-detached from the walker’s hand, and the shredded flesh that should have been covering its exposed esophagus.  He takes it down with two direct cracks to the skull, gore splattering on his nice clean jeans and faithful boots. Brain matter drops to the ground with an all-too-lucid “plop” when he readjusts and raises the bat from the ground.

Eren can feel his blood coursing through his body, cell for cell. He’s hyper aware of his breathing, of the way his muscles ache (like they always do, now). His face burns red hot, heartbeat banging in his ears. He’s high off of the adrenaline, sweat already dripping from his forehead and down his cheeks. He knows his friends are in danger, knows that _he’s_ in danger, but the only thought in his mind is turning every single one of the rotting meat sacks in their little sanctuary into a smudge on the hard tiled floors. He forgets, forgets that there are _humans_ , that they’re the cause of the real problem. There’s more gunfire, but Eren pushes past a few more checkout lines to bash another decomposing skull into the ground. There’s ringing in his ears now and he grits his teeth, head whipping towards another undead.

_Defend._

_Destroy._

_Eat—_

Levi shouts his name and the pieces click back together in Eren’s mind.

He freezes where he stands, six corpses spread across the floor in front of him. He’s hardly any distance away from the business center still but he’s already killed half a dozen of them— _and how can there be so many?_

“Eren,” Levi says, voice closer now, and Eren spins around to face him. There’s a bit of blood on his face and his hair is ruffled, but otherwise, he looks unscathed. His eyes are narrowed. “Have you seen any of them yet?”

“No,” Eren says before exhaling heavily. “I actually kinda zoned out . . . I lost where you guys were, so I just kind of started killing them.”

“Well snap the fuck out of it,” Levi says, but there’s no real bite to his voice and Eren nods, straightening his back. “I haven’t heard anything from the other three in a few minutes. We need to find them. We don’t have to kill them all at once—and that goes for the living ones, too.”

“Got it,” Eren says, nodding a little more fervently than he intends. Levi just about smiles at him.

“Don’t die, okay?”

Eren nods one last time and Levi turns on his heels. It isn’t until they’re past the pharmacy that they finally see that the dead are flowing in from the lawn and garden department. There aren’t as many as Eren expects, but he doesn’t allow the relief to settle in like it wants to. Levi jabs his hand out to the right, pointing towards the sporting goods and signaling for Eren to go down the aisle and come around to the lawn and garden entrance. The captain splits off in the opposite direction while Eren jogs over to the aisles he’s been instructed to investigate. There are only a couple of straggling dead waiting there for him and he knocks them into the emptied shelves with the bat in his hands.

When he rounds the corner, Levi’s already hacking away at the dead that come wobbling out of the most secluded department. The black haired man takes strong, broad swings for as small as he is, and it’s amazing to Eren. He takes down three in one wide sweep, two full heads and one-half dropping to the ground along with their respective bodies. There’s already a pool of horrid-smelling blood underneath Levi’s nicely polished boots, blood splattering onto the clean floor around him with every move he makes.

_Exactly what you’d expect._

The brunette finds himself mesmerized until Levi catches his eye and scowls.

“You’re gonna make me do all the goddamn work?” he calls, nearly offhandedly smashing a walker’s face into the wall with the sharp backside of his fire axe. He shakes the blood off and assesses the small group of walkers moving towards them, only six or seven. “How about you take these by yourself, then?”

“I have a bat!” Eren hisses but knows better than to raise his voice. “You have a fucking axe.”

“I’ve killed hundreds of these things with that bat, don’t fucking disrespect it.”

Eren finds himself grinning despite the situation, placidity filling his lungs when he inhales. His nerves are calmer, his heartbeat steadier, and when his eyes meet Levi’s, he feels almost fearless. The danger of their situation isn’t lost on him, but it’s easier to swallow, and he remembers again why Levi is their captain. _His captain._

Eren takes the first one, a stocky young man with an arm twisted backward and missing half his chest, down with a solid blow to the creature’s knees, bones cracking and breaking under the cold metal with little resistance. When it falls, another swing sends its head flying. It smashes into a shelf with a satisfying ‘pop’ and Eren chuckles at the soft hoot from Levi as encouragement. The second one tries to sneak up on him, and when he swings he accidentally clips its shoulder. The undead stumbles, a short one in a tattered dress and no shoes, before it steadies, and lifts its head to almost _analyze_ Eren.

It fucking _lunges_ at him, mouth open so wide the skin of its cheeks is ripping apart at the corners of its mouth.

Red gleams less than a foot in front of Eren, and he sees in great detail the way Levi’s fire axe lances its skull in two, straight through its open fucking mouth. Carnage flies, sprinkling Eren’s face, but he’s grinning from ear to ear, body vibrating from a mixture of adrenaline and eagerness.

“You would get a feisty one,” Levi says, bordering on casual, as he takes out another. “So much for you doing it all on your own.”

“Don’t act like I’m not capable!” Eren calls, but he only gets one more walker down before he realizes Levi’s taken down the rest. He finds the black haired man standing in the middle of four different _new_ corpses, dusting something goopy off of his shirt with a face.

“Oh, come on.”

“Don’t bitch, I’ve just extended your lifespan. Let’s go.”

They share a look for just a second before Levi is heading deeper into the department, but Eren lags behind, something _obnoxious_ fluttering in his chest. He manages to catch up to Levi, whose grey eyes are scanning the building for openings and breakthroughs, and all Eren sees is the look he’d seen in Levi’s eyes, something warm and akin to affection, something he hasn’t seen before. Usually, Levi’s stoic, if not charmingly cold. Maybe life-threatening situations brought out the sap in him.

“Go down those aisles and check things out while I check out the doors,” Levi says, voice hardly a whisper while his fingers are directing Eren to the left. “Yell if you need me.”

The aisles are mostly empty, aside from a crawler that just takes a quick crack to take care of. There’s blood, though, splattered over the aisles where he and Levi haven’t been yet. It throws up red flags for the brunette, but he says nothing, opting for quiet to not distract more dead. His fingers trail over traces of still-wet blood as he rounds the aisle and finds the other side is abandoned. Though he’s relieved, something uneasy weighs itself down in his stomach, warning. He heeds it, stepping cautiously until he’s back to the main section of the department.

Poking from between two aisles, just meters from Eren is the double barrel of a shotgun aimed straight at Levi, who’s standing at the fully secured department doors leading out into the garden area with his hands on his hips.

Eren moves without a thought, taking two long strides and a hard swing down onto the barrel of the shotgun. His eyes are clamped shut when he hears the shotgun fire.

 

_+_

 

When Levi spins around to the shot behind him, he sees a man he doesn’t recognize stumbling back, falling flat on his ass. He’s bleeding, both of his hands damaged from _something_ (he figures it’s the gunshot he’d heard, but Eren certainly doesn’t have a gun in his hands), and there’s a few pieces of what look to be shrapnel sticking just slightly out of his forehead and cheeks, blood dripping from each little speck. There’s a pretty rough-looking shotgun on the ground, the barrel dented harshly and split open in the center. 

Eren’s there, too, reeling on the other side of the aisle. He doesn’t look to be too hurt, but he’s got a grimace and a pinched look to his face, eyes clamped shut as he rubs his hands over his ears. He’s only off course for a second before he bounces right back and comes back around the corner to face the attacker, bat in hand and anger burning in his pretty yellow eyes.

The stranger holds Eren’s eyes for only a second before he’s shuffling in the pockets of his jacket to pull out a small pistol. He takes aim at Eren after cocking it, hands visibly shaking as he holds the gun, sweat dripping down his brow and off of his hair.

Eren doesn’t think twice. He doesn’t even hesitate.

One crack to the skull and the guy drops the gun in his lap, and Levi thanks god it doesn’t fire because it’s pointing directly at Eren. Two cracks and he’s flat on his back, eyes shut and body still. Eren isn’t done, though, because the third crack is the last impact the man’s fragile bones can take. Human blood splashes onto the concrete of the lawn and garden department and onto Eren’s already-bloodied jeans. He doesn’t stop, though, swinging hard, crack after crack, and by the time Levi makes it to him there’s nothing but a bloody lump of brain, hair, and bone on the floor at the end of what once was a neck.

“Eren,” he says, voice softer than Eren’s ever heard, he’s damn sure of that. Eren jerks back, body freezing as he holds the bat overhead behind him, ready to pull down and deliver another useless blow. It’s dripping blood and grey matter but Levi pushes that to the back of his priorities as he touches Eren’s arm and tries to ease his arms down to a static position. “Come on. You’re alright. We’re alright.”

“You’re okay?” he hears Eren’s hoarse voice push out and his chest clenches. The brunette finally turns his head to see him and his golden eyes are wide, pupils dilated. His mouth drops open just a little and he drops the bat behind him, and it slams to the ground with an unnecessary bang. But Eren’s arms are wrapping around his shoulders and while he stares over the brunette’s shoulder, wide-eyed, he decides it can be forgiven. “I didn’t even—I should have ch-checked to see if you were okay first but I—“

“Shut up,” Levi says sharply, and Eren tenses. Levi sighs, hands finding Eren’s back and rubbing awkward circles through his (clean) hoodie. “You saved my ass. I’m fine and so are you. We need—“

“I-I’ve never killed a person before.”

Levi pulls back to study Eren’s features. His jaw is clenched and his eyes are devoid of emotion, his face a little paler than it was just a few moments before. He’s not quivering, though, or shaking, puking, crying or going into hysterics so Levi can’t help but consider that in itself a little bit of a win. God _dammit_ does he want nothing more than to sit Eren down and help him cope.

He remembers the first time he’d killed a person, a few short months after the apocalypse had begun. They’d been attacking their building, doing something similar to this break-in, scratch the dead in the building. He’d been saving his own ass, though, not anyone else’s. He wasn’t proud of this memory, but maybe he’d share it with Eren to help him rest a little easier.

Later, though.

“There’s a first time for everything, kid,” Levi says. He manages a small half-smile. “You saved me, though, and that’s what you need to focus on, okay? We have other people to save, too.”

Levi sees something connect behind Eren’s eyes and he nods a little weakly. He wants to sigh but he doesn’t, knowing damn well letting himself get frustrated or impatient would help nobody in any situation right now. There is, however, the sounds of gunfire ring through the rest of the super center and it’s absolutely no time to be wasting time.

“Let’s go save them and figure out where all these rotten fucks are coming from,” Levi says, picking the disgusting, dented bat up off the floor and shoving it into Eren’s hands. Life is pouring back into his face by the second and Levi knows to thank his lucky stars. “And I promise we’ll make time for this later.”

After a moment, Eren nods and steps away from Levi, letting the bat drop to his side. He stares at the ground, away from the body and the blood he’d left there. Normalcy is taking its time to return to the boy, and Levi’s almost a little surprised it’s done so much damage to the poor kid. As long as he can keep his eyes on Eren, Levi doesn’t have too much of a doubt that he can keep him alive, even after the little slip up they’d both made. Levi readjusts his grip on his fire axe, and with his other hand gently grabs Eren’s arm and tugs on it lightly as he starts towards the lawn and garden exit. Eren’s footsteps behind him are clumsy and uneven but he tries to appreciate that the boy’s following him at all.

They make it just a hair past the opening to the department when Petra comes into view.

Levi opens his mouth to shout something to get her attention, but he sees two more strangers, dressed dark and ridiculously fucking tall (one bald and one brunette), closing in on her.  She backs up, eyes wide with no weapon in her hands until her hip rams into a metal shelf and a few dusty products drop off of the shelf. He turns his attention to Eren, intending it to be brief, but the fire is back in the boy’s eyes. His gaze is fixed on the men cornering Petra and his fist is clenched to his side.

But it isn’t until the brunette man grabs Petra by the hair that he darts in their direction, Levi on his heels. Petra’s screaming before they reach her, and Levi can see a blade in the bald man’s hand.

The last time the metal bat cracks is when it smashes into baldy’s dome. The man is heavyset and probably sweating to death under three layers of clothes but he practically _flies_ until his body rams into a full display of perfumes and body soaps, blade clattering to the ground with him. Eren takes the few steps to close the distance and kicks the blade away from the stranger. Levi’s already turning to make his move on the brunette stranger (who’s just tossing a bloody Petra to the hard linoleum, and it takes most of Levi’s willpower to not see absolutely red), and out of the corner of his eye, he spots movement. There’s hope in his heart, and he knows that at this point in life there shouldn’t be, that it’ll be his own people.

There’s a gun in his face before he sees that they’re not his people, and they’ve got guns as well.

There are exactly two seconds of quiet. It’s so soft and pure on Levi’s ears, something he hadn’t appreciated until the last year.

He doesn’t know if Eren has noticed the men with the guns. He doesn’t know if Eren is aware that he’s so close to him that he can practically smell him. He doesn’t even know if they’re going to survive at this point, with Petra probably bleeding out on the floor, Gunter, and Erd out of sight and at least four firearms pointed at the two of them. What he does know is this _fucking sucks,_ and that he truly already misses sitting with Eren in his business center with his hair in his fingers (and that’s something he plans on keeping to himself until he dies, which may quite possibly be very soon).

He turns his gaze to Eren like he’s done so many times, but this time the barrel of a gun explodes just behind him and he _watches_ as the bullet rips through the left side of the boy’s chest. He sees the way the impact rocks Eren back on his feet and the way he nearly stumbles, grip on his bat going slack until it drops onto the linoleum. Two forceful hands are grabbing Levi’s biceps to drag him away from Eren and he lets them, limp with the realization of what’s happened. He thinks he can hear Petra saying Eren’s name over and over, voice soft and scared and hopeful like it’s a prayer on her lips. But the boy’s back hits the ground when he finally falls, golden eyes wide with no fear.

Levi finds himself swept away with the group of invaders, their numbers growing to eight. One of them stops to pick up Petra and she immediately struggles, face still dripping with blood, sweat and what appear to be tears now. Gunter and Erd are still nowhere to be seen. Eren’s on the ground, bleeding, dying.

“If you say a fucking word, you’re gonna be zombie food,” a man growls into Levi’s ear, the nose of a pistol pressing against the base of his skull. His axe is ripped from his grip. “Move faster.”

He finally, _finally,_ removes his gaze from Eren and turns it to what’s in front of him. There’s a dozen of them, now, Gunter and Erd shoved in the middle of the new small group of four. Their hands are up and their weapons are down, but they’re unharmed, thank fuck. He can hear the sound of Petra struggling, trying her hardest to break from the man holding her, blood matting in her hair and covering most of her face. She’s crying, shouting.

Levi’s heart aches.

This is the first time they’ve been outnumbered like this, the first time they’ve lost someone like this.

He’s pushed along, but he hears nothing. His brain is moving, but nothing comes of it, no exit plan and certainly no quick response.

_Eren’s dead. Petra’s hurt. We’re outnumbered. There are undead in the store._

_I’ve ended these people’s lives._


End file.
